JIT.Academy will tell you about the most prominent teachers in Ukraine and the world who made a revolution in pedagogy in their time. First, the conversation will be about Ukrainian educators and scientists.

Vasyl Sukhomlynskyi

Vasyl Sukhomlynskyi is perhaps the most famous teacher (and, at the same time, a publicist, writer, and poet) in Ukraine. 

Sukhomlynskyi was born on September 28, 1918, in the village of Vasylivka in the Kirovohrad region. He studied at a local seven-year school, at a teacher’s institute in Kremenchuk, and at the correspondence department of the Poltava Pedagogical Institute.

For 23 years, he worked as the director of the Pavlysh secondary school. In 1958, Sukhomlynsky was awarded the title of Honored Teacher.

Sukhomlynsky wrote 48 monographs, more than 600 articles, and 1,500 stories and fairy tales for children. His works have been published in 53 languages, with a total circulation of almost 15 million copies, including in Great Britain, France, and Japan. 

The most famous work of the humanist pedagogue is the book “I Give My Heart to Children.” This book is about a happy childhood that an adult can provide for children. The book was translated into 30 languages and reprinted 54 times.

Khrystyna Alchevska

Ukrainian pedagogue and public education organizer Khrystyna Alchevska was born in the Chernihiv region on April 4, 1841. 

She is the wife of the founder of the city of Alchevsk, the financier genius Oleksiy. Khrystyna challenged the anti-Ukrainian policy of the russian empire and taught women in the eastern regions writing, literature, and history of Ukraine.

In 1862, Alchevska founded the first free Sunday school for girls in Kharkiv, which had no analogs in our region then. One hundred volunteer teachers worked at the school. “Schoolgirls” studied jurisprudence, physics, chemistry, geography, the history of Ukraine, writing, and mathematics and attended theaters. 

Then, in the village of Oleksiivka (now Luhansk region), the family of Alchevski opened a one-class zemstvo school, where they also taught in the Ukrainian language. By the way, Borys Hrinchenko taught there.

Alchevska was called “the rich woman who taught the east of Ukraine to write.”

The couple had six children, not deprived of talents. Son Mykola became the author of the first primer for adults in the Ukrainian language, and Ivan became an opera singer, the “king of tenors.” He performed 55 opera parts in 16 years – his repertoire included works by Petro Chaikovskyi, Mykola Lysenko, and Yaroslav Stepovyi.

But daughter Khrystia chose a literary path, becoming a writer, playwright, novelist, poet, and teacher. She held rallies, read books to young people in Ukrainian, had connections with the underground, and translated a lot from Russian and French.

Borys Hrinchenko

Ukrainian writer, teacher, lexicographer, literary critic, ethnographer, historian, publicist, and social and cultural activist Borys Hrinchenko was born on November 27, 1863, in the village of Vilkhovyi Yar in Kharkiv region. 

Hrinchenko learned to read at 5, reread his parents’ entire library, and began writing poems.

He studied at the Kharkiv Real School, and then self-education allowed him to pass the exams for the title of a public teacher at Kharkiv University.

Hrinchenko worked as a teacher in the villages of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Katerynoslav regions. He also wrote a lot; his works were regularly published in magazines and almanacs. He had many literary pseudonyms during his life: Vasyl Chaichenko, L. Yavorenko, P. Vartovyi, B. Vilkhovyi, Perekotypole, and Hrechanyk.

Hrinchenko became the author of ethnographic, linguistic, literary, and pedagogical works and historical essays. In addition, he is the author of the first dictionary of the Ukrainian language – the four-volume explanatory “Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language.”

He also edited several Ukrainian periodicals and inspired the spread of the Ukrainian language in schools and institutions. Thus, Hrinchenko compiled the first textbooks on the Ukrainian language and literature, particularly “Ridne Slovo” (Native Word) – a book for reading at school.

Anton Makarenko 

Ukrainian and russian pedagogue-innovator and social pedagogue Anton Makarenko was born on March 1, 1888, in Bilopilla, Sumy region.

Anton studied at an elementary school, then at the Kremenchuk City School, where he became a student of one-year pedagogical courses that trained elementary school teachers. Later, he entered the teacher’s institute in Poltava, where he graduated with a gold medal.

Makarenko is considered a classic of world pedagogy of the 20th century.

He is the creator of a new method of educational work with the children’s team. He was a writer and also organized and managed a colony for juvenile delinquents and homeless people near Poltava.

Makarenko is considered one of the most outstanding teachers in the world. His group education method and family education theory, which he developed in the 1920s in Ukraine, are still being studied by researchers worldwide.

Yakiv Reznyk 

Yakiv Reznyk, the first Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences in Ukraine, and a researcher of didactics, psychology, and education, was born on April 23, 1982, in Chornobyl, Kyiv region, in a family of Jewish teachers.

After graduating from elementary school in 1905-1909, Yakiv studied at Chornobyl courses. There he studied russian, Ukrainian, Latin, German, English, and French in depth. Then Reznyk was a student at Kyiv University. 

He taught Hebrew in Chornobyl and Kyiv schools, headed the “Research Children’s Home,” gave courses on pedagogy, lectures on pedagogy at teacher training courses, and taught pedagogy at the first Jewish pedagogical, technical school.

Reznyk, among other things, taught pedagogy and the history of pedagogy at the Odesa Institute of Public Education, where he received the title of professor.

In 1940, the teacher became a professor at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Pedagogy. He defended the first doctoral dissertation in Ukraine in pedagogy.